The mystery at the centre of the Milky Way

The giant black hole at the centre of the Milky Way may be producing mysterious particles called neutrinos, researchers believe. If confirmed, this would be the first time that scientists have traced neutrinos back to a black hole.

Researchers say the find could help explain how cosmic rays are produced and solve a key mystery about how the universe operates.

The evidence came from three NASA satellites that observe in X-ray light:

The Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Swift gamma-ray mission and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). “Figuring out where high-energy neutrinos come from is one of the biggest problems in astrophysics today,” said Yang Bai of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who co-authored a study about these results published in Physical Review D. “We now have the first evidence that an astronomical source – the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole – may be producing these very energetic neutrinos.”

Neutrinos are tiny particles that carry no charge and interact very weakly with electrons and protons. Unlike light or charged particles, neutrinos can emerge from deep within their cosmic sources and travel across the universe without being absorbed by intervening matter or, in the case of charged particles, deflected by magnetic fields.